Allan Ludwig stands outside the Newcastle Publick House on Thursday, Feb. 2. Ludwig is a bartender at King Eider’s Pub in Damariscotta and Coveside Restaurant and Marina in South Bristol during the busy summer months. (Evan Houk photo)
Bremen resident Allan Ludwig has followed his career arc from being a life coach at an Arizona boarding school to becoming one of the most sought-after bartenders in Lincoln County.
Ludwig attributes his success to his personality, his friendliness, and his willingness to listen to people and express empathy, truly feeling their pain.
“I’m very empathetic, I’d say,” Ludwig said during an interview on Thursday, Feb. 2. “When I see other people sad, I kind of feel it. It can affect me too.”
Ludwig said his job basically boils down to providing excellent service and being people’s friend, which seems to come to him naturally.
The service industry — especially at Coveside Restaurant and Marina in South Bristol where Ludwig works in the summertime — is a high-pressure, high-pace job that requires the worker to juggle several different tasks simultaneously and bounce between them consistently, all while keeping every customer happy and attended to.
“It’s all psychology,” Ludwig said. “It’s all about reading the room.”
Some people might crack under this pressure, but Ludwig thrives under it.
“I love that high-stress bartending. I love just being able to sling drinks,” Ludwig said.
Ludwig was born in New York but has deep roots in Maine. His parents’ summer place near Pemaquid Point was the first house he visited after being born and adopted by them.
“That was the first house I had actually been in before I had even been to our house in New York, as a baby,” Ludwig said.
Growing up, he lived in Manhattan during most of the year and visited Maine in the summer.
When Ludwig was 15, he was sent to an Arizona boarding school where he had to “earn” his way out.
“It was always bound to happen. I was a reckless kid,” Ludwig said. “I got whipped right into shape.”
After about 14 months at the boarding school, Ludwig moved to Tucson, Ariz. to finish high school and continued to work as a life coach at the boarding school that he declined to name.
“Then I just wanted to help people really,” Ludwig said. “Most of it was I just really like to talk to people and help them out, hear their stories. I’m a very social type of individual.”
He said his job was simply to “be a friend” to many of the teens he was working with and gently guide them into making healthy decisions.
“If I become something of authority in somebody’s life or give them rules, regulations, the odds of them listening to me go way down,” Ludwig said.
In his 20s, Ludwig was considering continuing his education in the field of behavioral health, but he lost so many of those close friends he knew in Arizona to drug overdoses. It took a heavy toll.
“I was like, I don’t think I can take the emotional toll,” Ludwig said. “It occurred to me that I can work in a restaurant, I can still talk to people, still be social, and I still make an equal to more amount of money.”
Ludwig then went to bartending school in Arizona before returning to Manhattan.
“It was funny, once I did that, I realized nobody would hire me because I had no actual bartending experience,” Ludwig said.
After working his way up as a barback, or bartender’s assistant, for a few years at Chef Mike Ferraro’s restaurant Delicatessen, he became a bartender there.
It was the arrival of COVID-19 and the resulting shutdown in New York City that led Ludwig to move to Lincoln County full time. He said the COVID-19 lockdown was stricter and lasted longer in New York City, resulting in little to no available bartending jobs.
“I remember March 13, I was sitting at this bar, Gatsby’s, just opened about a month ago … everyone was having their final hurrah,” Ludwig said.
He had worked at The Contented Sole and The Harbor Room in New Harbor in previous summers, so when he received the call from The Harbor Room in 2020, he was ready to make the move.
“After that, I just chose not to leave,” Ludwig said.
Currently, he works at King Eider’s Pub in Damariscotta and Coveside Restaurant and Marina in the summer, and has been sought after as head bartender at other area establishments.
Ludwig said one of the keys to bartending is knowing the brands of alcohol and memorizing the food specials and the specialty cocktail list in order to upsell customers. He said these were key components that bartending school did not touch on.
The customer is always right, he said, until they are wrong. For instance, if the restaurant is out of a certain item, the customer has to be told the truth patiently.
One of the most important lessons Ludwig has learned during his time bartending is “you say what you mean, but you don’t be mean,” he said.
In his spare time, Ludwig also works as a disc jockey at weddings and enjoys the local music scene.
Sometimes Ludwig still runs into people he used to play with as kids. He said he enjoys the small-town atmosphere and pace of Midcoast Maine, as well as the lower cost of living, compared to life in New York City.
“Everybody here knows everybody,” he said. “I know way more people here than I have anywhere.”
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